New Year, New Ideas

It's time to review and finish the year strong and move to the next phase of new year, new me. I kept saying new year, new me last year, taking the cliche and just using it to my advantage. The year of Suz! I make every year the year of Suz, but this year was really more than just words. After some really tough years, it was a pretty amazing turn around in a lot of ways. I'm always positive and happy even in tough times, but this year I was able to make some very real changes in trajectory.

So as I once again get ready for new year, new me and to proclaim it the year of Suz, it's time to step it up. Take it to the next level. Next level shit. I have realized that as much as I have lost, I still have a lot more to lose. I'm where I used to be a long time ago when I used to be unhappy with my weight and wanted to lose. This used to be a high weight for me. It's a great weight compared to 50 pounds ago, but it would be awesome to keep going.

When I'm in yoga class now, I feel huge improvements in my movement and my stamina and my strength, but when I look in the mirror, it's a weird thing. I look way smaller than I used to look when I did yoga, but I look fat compared to how I feel when I look at myself in my jeans and sweatshirts at home.

When I'm training, I feel like I'm doing way more than I did when I started training in August, but then I do new things and I feel like Oliver in St. Vincent as he tried to do his pull ups and sit ups in his gym class and couldn't do anything. Or as his little arm punched the bag in the garage with Bill Murrray.

I am adding a circuit class on Fridays and a yoga class on Wednesdays. That's a good upgrade. I think I need to add some cardio somewhere. I wish there was a cardio class I liked. I might go to the mall in the morning like my brother does when he's in town and do a mall walk once or twice a week. That's something I have to figure out. Maybe even an outdoor walk. I can layer up! I can't see me doing Zumba. I love to dance, but that's just weird.

P.S. I just decided I might add spinning classes at the gym once or twice a week. I need to buy some padded leggings!!! Shopping!

More Stuff From Mr. Smarty Pants

Change your mindset. Mr. Smarty Pants always posts that. Khris was on a talk show today and they were talking about eating and the host used the word cheating when talking about his diet. Khris said that cheating is the wrong way to think about it.

I was happy to hear that. Ever since I started changing my eating habits in March, I haven't once thought that I was "bad" or "cheating" if I didn't follow my exact diet or if I didn't lose weight in a particular week. I went a few times where 4 weeks went by without losing a pound, but I just kept going and doing what I was doing.

Last weekend when I ate those fries and chips with my dinner, I didn't once think I was cheating or that I ruined anything. I just thought, I'm eating some fries with my French Dip or I'm eating some chips with my turkey sandwich. I picked out the best fries and chips on the plate and ate them.

I didn't equivocate and tell myself I deserved it after all the weight I've lost. I didn't feel guilty and I didn't feel entitled. I just made a choice. I didn't make a deal with myself to do better tomorrow or start over next week or work them off on the bike. I just did it and that was that.

I think you get in trouble when you start attaching too much emotion to your eating in good ways or bad ways. It's too dramatic to think of it as being good or bad. It's just eating. It doesn't make you a good person or a bad person. You don't deserve a drink or a dessert. And you aren't depriving yourself of anything if you make choices not to have things. You're choosing not to have them because you like the way your body feels and performs when you don't eat them.

Khris also said something else that I liked. He said that the host should think that he ate steak because he "wanted" it. I like that idea. It's less dramatic than all those excuses like...I worked hard today or I had a bad day at work or heck with my diet, it's my Birthday, I'm going crazy. You don't have to be so all or nothing. You can just have something because you want it and still not say, well as long as I'm eating bad, I might as well eat really bad and order dessert and eat everything in sight.

I did that on my birthday and on Thanksgiving. I wanted chicken marsala from Armand's on my birthday and I ordered it. I ordered it and I ate it. It was delicious. I didn't order dessert. I didn't really need it or want it, but I wanted that chicken marsala!

On Thanksgiving I wanted the turkey and dressing and mashed potatoes and gravy. I didn't eat the rolls because even though they are good, I didn't need the bread and butter and I didn't really want them all that much. But I wanted the dressing and mashed potatoes and turkey. I also ate green beans and I ate slowly and enjoyed everything.

Then the next day, I went back to my workout and my normal eating.

Change your mindset. I'm ready for the next big burst of big change. I was happy with where I am and I still am, but I'm getting restless now with where I am. I want more change. I'm ready for more. I've settled into this weight. I appreciate how far I've come. But now I really see, I have a long way to go. I hope my body allows it. My mind is ready. I'm over Christmas. Bring on 2018.

My Trainer Thinks He's So Smart!

It's the holidays and also I've been overloaded from taking care of my uncle after his spectacular fall at his house. I'm not one of those people who thrives on stress and keeping a hectic schedule. I like a nice easy pace and I love my time alone to recharge.

But I refuse to give up my training time now. My training session today was very fun as usual, but I had to really work and I was sweating and pushing.

Of course, my smarty pants trainer notices and figures out everything and knew that I haven't been eating right and that's why my body wasn't able to give what it normally could.

I wanted to blame him for working me too hard, but that can be our little secret. Of course, he was right. It is the holidays and my brother and my nephew are in town and I've been eating different stuff than normal.

I've tried to order well, but I haven't had fries or chips since March and I had fries and chips in the last 3 days with my otherwise smartly ordered choices.

Usually I just don't order the fries or the chips, but they came with the meals. I should have said, don't bring them!!!

I've been doing great as far as sugar goes. I stay away from desserts and cookies and candy, but I need to stay away from salty chips and fries and cheese and things that make me tired and make me have pain and add pounds.

It's funny how it's the small things that make the big difference with so many things in life. It's not the big choices, it's the small choices over time. But it's also those little lessons that we learn. So thanks to Mr. Smarty Pants, I learned a good lesson before the New Year!! Happy New Year!

Next Level Shit!

I thought I was pretty much blogged out for a while about training, but no. I'm a blabbermouth blogger! To my trainer Khris:

I already knew that I loved my training. I have more energy and I have less pain. I'm happy with my weight loss and wearing regular size clothes. It seemed like the hard work is behind me. Not true. The hard work is really still in front of me.

I've found that it's actually easier to work at things when the results seem so dramatic and so far away. It seems like it's getting harder now that the results seem smaller and less visible. They are truly inner results. I go weeks now without losing pounds. But I gain muscle and I gain energy and confidence and I'm having fun and making small improvements and maintaining.

But maintenance is a deceiving word. I'm not just maintaining. I'm still improving. If I wasn't doing training, I would just be maintaining. Training is some next level shit. I don't do the same workout every session. Even the sit ups and leg lifts aren't the same each time.

You have me do crazy stuff with steps and ropes and machines and bouncing balls while doing lunge lines. It's something different every time. And I'm different every time. I would never do this for myself. Even if I knew how. You are my coach. I need you.

I know I'm doing what I'm supposed to be doing because I had to rest last week after going out and doing things every day.

I hit a little tired wall. I hit a wall after going out EVERY day during a week! I also had another emotional release that made no sense during that rest day after not having one of those for a while.

That means I'm moving forward! I'm ready for the next level shit! I'm so glad I have someone who believes in me in a way that takes me there.

Khris, you inspire me! I can look at you and say, Because of you, I didn't give up."

Acceptance Comes Before Breakthroughs

There's a girl in a little Facebook Fibromyalgia group that reminds me a lot of me where I was a few years ago. She's having a really tough time working and she's desperately trying everything to help her pain and fatigue. She's always reading up on things and trying new supplements or medications.

She talks about feeling envious of people on television and in movies who do fun activities and seem to have energy to do things. She also talks about the emotional pain of people not believing that her pain is real. Thinking she is lazy or doesn't push herself.

I've been there. I'm not exactly there now and it's tricky for me to talk to her without sounding like a reformed alcoholic or smoker who knows it all. I don't know it all, that's for sure. She talked tonight about acceptance.

I remember that during the time I went through the process of being told that retiring was my best option and actually dealing with all the paperwork and appointments and then selling my house and being retired, I had to do a lot of accepting.

I had to accept my condition, which included lots of saying its name out loud. I had to accept my new financial situation. I had to accept my body and all of its physical limitations including its look and asking for help. I think that I had to fully accept everything before I was able to open up and break through any denial.

In the most confusing of ways I had to accept who I was and that I was enough just the way I was, including the pain, the fat, the hurts, the feeling sorry for myself, and everything else in order to stop looking for quick fixes.

If I was enough, I didn't need a quick fix. If I had a thyroid problem, that could explain my difficulty losing weight, but it didn't help me lose weight, so who cares? If my feet hurt because I had bone spurs, they still hurt. All those things were about proving to other people or to myself that I wasn't faking my difficulties.

I knew I wasn't faking. If I really just believed I was enough, any self-development I embarked on was based on my own desires and not on the belief that I needed to do something to make me acceptable to others.

So, now that I have gone through a big breakthrough during the last several months, I think that I'm in need of that lesson again. Maybe this girl is asking these questions not for me to help her, but for her to help me.

I am at a great point, but I still have many things that I need to accept again in order to move to the next breakthrough. New things. I still get jealous of people who get to do fun things.  Even though I have more energy than I did before and I do way more things than I used to, there are still things I'd like to do and don't have anyone to do them with. It's tricky when you are at ease being by yourself, but you'd like to do things with people sometimes.

I love the holiday season, but I still get up and down happy and sad depending on what I'm doing. I can't keep the holiday high going. I try to do Christmasy things, and they make me happy, but it doesn't last.

Every year I have to remember that holidays aren't the same as an adult. I don't get to see my family anymore the way we did as kids and even now the nephews and niece are older and don't come to stay with me for days and do things anymore.

So this December, I shall enjoy the Christmas season and not place too many expectations on myself or on the season. And I shall consider what else needs accepting before I crash through the next set of walls into 2018.

Bursting with Joy

When my little nephew came to my new apartment after I sold my townhouse when I retired from teaching  and moved on up to the suburbs on the West side (haha), he told me it was bursting with joy! His body was bursting with joy as he gave me that news!

When I first started working out, I had some odd and random emotional releases in the way of crying and sadness and unfortunate bursts of hurt feelings and crying for really no reason.

My trainer and my doctor figured that they were from the release of just everything that had been held in the muscles that are now breaking down and rebuilding in better, stronger, healthier ways.

These emotional releases went away after awhile until today. I had a great workout, as always. But my legs were nice and wobbly at the end. On my way out to my car, I just started crying. But this emotional release wasn't sad or crabby or filled with hurt feelings about anything.

I was bursting with joy. When I started exercising back in August,  I was doing it to enhance my weight loss and trying to do more with my life. I never in a million years imagined that what has happened would happen. People talk about how important setting goals is in life. But goals are too small. They aren't enough. They are just the beginning.

I had to go back into the gym and tell Khris that he has changed my life and that it's not just exercise to me. He has given me my life back. I could lose all the weight in the world and it wouldn't have taken the pain away or given me the happiness and energy the way that his personality and his training has done for me.

In true Khris fashion, he just said that's good and he's happy and he hugged me. But he was not surprised in the least, which makes me love him even more. He calls me a unicorn, but he's a unicorn, too. You don't meet people that have that kind of caring and passion about what they do every day. I'm so grateful that I met him.

I truly believe that he was sent to me by the universe.

My muscles were letting go of lots of pain in their previous emotional releases. But now when I cry it's because my muscles are bursting with joy!

Surrender, Acceptance and Demolition

Surrender. Sounds like giving up. I love words. Khris and I were talking about words today. Comprehension and how words don't always mean what we think they mean. There are deeper meanings to words and concepts.

I just read my first blog post from April when I was ready for things to start happening for myself. I had started little things already. I had started cleaning out closets and changing my diet. I had broken out of denial. I was ready to surrender. And I love control.

Acceptance. That was the word Khris mentioned today. That was where I had to get in order to surrender and move forward. I had to accept everything about where I was in order to break out of denial and, as he once put it, wave away all the smoke from in front of me.

Here are some of the words I wrote back then:

I'm really working on change that is true change and happiness change that works with who I am and treating myself with the same care and non-judgment I give to others. It's not a competition or a race. Yoga teaches me that. It's surrender. I need surrender. I love control. I need to let go. I need to be free. I need to live in the now.

Yoga makes you accept what is. Not what you wish were. That doesn't mean things can't change. But they haven't changed yet. You have to accept what is now before you can move. And the growth can be small. I can inhale and twist just a tiny bit more and in yoga I feel great about that. I was able to twist a tiny bit more because I didn't force it or get mad about it. I accepted where I was. I breathed in, I reached and if I got a little further, then I was happy, if I didn't, I still got a nice breath and a stretch.

Everything I have done in the last 2 years has brought me to this point and now I'm ready for my next steps. The renovations on my place are starting and the renovations on myself are beginning as well. It's demolition time! The results will be spectacular. I need to knock down some walls. I'm ready for the magic. I surrender!

I'm still in complete awe of the idea of personal training and how it has transformed my pain levels and my energy and my joy for life and my joy for working out. I used to always say that yoga was magic. Now I believe that training is magic and Khris is a magician.

There is surrender and acceptance in training. I come in without a care in the world and I know that he has a plan for me and I just do what he says. I don't ask questions or complain or wonder why he has me do the things he has me do. I'm past that. I just do. That may not be the right approach for other people and their training, but it's my approach. 

Why would I question or complain or wonder about something that gives me the joy and the results that it has given me. My goal is not weight loss or inches loss or measurable anything. I'm not competing for anything. My goal is to enjoy getting up and having a place to go and someone who is kind to me and makes me happy to be with him and takes away my pain. I didn't even know my goal when I started. 

That's my goal now. I want to have some accountability. I want to know that I'm getting up and going somewhere that there is someone waiting for me. Someone who wants me to feel better and who thinks about my well-being when I'm there and is happy to see me. I know I'll get through this winter because of him. 

It's amazing how fast things have gone since I wrote those things in April. Now that I have a magician in my corner, I wonder where things will go next! I really don't know. I accept where I am. I surrender!